Wednesday, 6 August 2014

NASM’s Heinkel He-219 and Horten flying wing Restoration Update

The restoration crew at the Paul E. Garber Restoration Facility in Silver Hill, Maryland has finished their work repairing the wings for the museum’s unique Heinkel He-219 A-2 Uhu, Wk.Nr.290202. In mid-July, the team prepared the freshly repainted wings for shipment to the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. For the first time in years, they took the long-hidden 63′ span airfoil outside, mounted to its massive custom steel frame, and rotated the whole assembly 90 degrees, until it lay in a more natural, horizontal configuration. It is now more or less ready for loading onto a flat-bed truck for the forty mile journey to its final home.

Elsewhere the centre section of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's unique Horten H IX V3 is being prepared for transport to their Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. This radical-looking, flying wing is the prototype for what would have been the formidable Horten Ho-229 jet fighter with the Luftwaffe had WWII lasted much longer. Only one of the prototypes flew, and it crashed, but the Horten brother’s had proven the basic concept with smaller, but similarly-shaped gliders, so it really was only a matter of time and resources before the jet-powered variant could have been perfected for combat. NASM’s example is the last of her breed. American forces captured her in the closing days of the war, and shipped her back to the US for evaluation. The aircraft is based upon a steel frame, but the exterior cladding is mostly plywood, which is in quite poor condition with significant de-lamination in places.